Squelched Cartoonist Turns to Painting

By ROBERTA HERSHENSON

Published: September 22, 1991

CORTLAND MANOR—
LOU MYERS considers himself "the best kind of misfit." Whatever bothers him goes right on the drawing boards so the world can laugh. His wordless cartoons, lampooning neurosis and its fixers, have appeared in magazines like The New Yorker, The Nation, Esquire and Playboy for more than 40 years.

Mr. Myers also contributes to The New York Times and The Washington Post and is the artist responsible for the well-known poster for the film "La Cage Aux Folles" of two men wearing a single polka-dot dress.

But these days, Mr. Myers said, he is feeling squelched. His brand of humor puts off the new breed of editors -- "the corporate people, the vegetable people," he called them -- who never laugh and always worry about offending someone.

They wanted him to write captions for his cartoons, he said, which "slows the impulse" of the humor. If he can't be free to reveal life as he sees it, he'd rather quit, Mr. Myers said. That is why he has begun painting, he explained. At the age of 76, Mr. Myers has a new calling. House Filled With Canvases

"I have covered my walls with psychobabble," the cartoonist said on the phone recently. "Come on up and see!"

The canvases stretch from ceiling to floor of the home he shares here with his wife, Bernice, an author and illustrator of children's books. A man reads The Wall Street Journal with his head in a noose, while a woman helps him hang himself. A psychiatrist kneels on the floor and prays as a monstrous woman talks on his couch. Another man about to hang himself stops to laugh at TV.

"Claustrophobia," which was recently sold, shows many heads facing different ways in a dense red space. In "Oedipus," a woman's large busom is an umbrella for her son, while the rain soaks her husband.

Some of the paintings are based on Mr. Myers's cartoons, but "Digestion" is in a class by itself. It depicts the cartoon editor of The New Yorker being eaten by a lion. His legs are still in the lion's mouth as he emerges from the other end, still reading The New Yorker. Complaints Against The New Yorker

The New Yorker, where not just Mr. Myers's cartoons but his short stories have been published regularly, has become the enemy. "I was the first one thrown out" when the present editor-in-chief, Robert A. Gottlieb, arrived at the magazine in 1987, Mr. Myers said.

"They want a middle-brow kind of nothing, not making waves, not disturbing anyone," the cartoonist said. "That's because of the art direction. That's how your magazines die."

He added that the editors demanded "a with-it type imbecile," while his characters are free spirits who act impetuously. Decorum has nothing to do with them, and that includes priests, presidents and Santa Claus.

"A cartoon is an impulse in another world, another quickness," Mr. Myers said. "Tempo is a big part of it. So is sunshine and wit. You put people to sleep if you explain too much." 'Nothing Is Wrong With People'

If psychotherapy takes the brunt of his humor, it's because he thinks psychoanalysis is "a money thing, a money rip, a middle-brow, middle- class milieu."

"In therapy people restructure you so you'll be a success," the cartoonist said. "It's the American way -- to be a success with money and be a hit. If you're not in the money thing there's something wrong; it's always your fault as the person being analyzed."

"The idea is to find out what's wrong with you," he went on. "I say nothing is wrong with people!"

Ask this nonconformist what keeps him going, and he answers quickly. "Hate!" he said with a smile. Letters of Praise Received

He speaks in staccato phrases, so it is a surprise to read his fiction. His autobiographical novel, "When Life Falls It Falls Upside Down," was published last year. In many parts it is as wild and wacky as his cartoons, but there is also a gentleness and a wealth of description in it about his family.

The author is proud of the letters he has received from such luminaries as Russell Baker and Wallace Shawn praising his writing. He plans to do more, while painting and fulfilling advertising contracts from Canadian and Japanese concerns.

If American cartooning is in a slump, Mr. Myers blames the political climate and editors who are "weird and inhibited."

"There's a kind of Stalinism today making out it's the best of all possible worlds when it isn't," Mr. Myers said. "It's best to show what life is really like."

Photos: Lou Myers, top, and two canvases from his psychobabble series, the paintings that now stretch from ceiling to floor at his home in Cortlandt Manor.